Conclusion

This part re-examines the development of the new educational field and the changing learning-politics relations from 1895 to 1926. Traditional China had the Confucian-political orthodoxy tension, with politics dominant in the imperial examinations from Ming to Qing Dynasty. From 1905 onwards, schools replaced the imperial examinations, but fostered the unstable habitus of “anti-institutional impulse.” Cai Yuanpei tried balancing “academic-political-moral orthodoxies” via Peking University (PKU) reform, building a Western science-based “academic society.” In the age of post-imperial examination, new students from secondary and normal schools, with blocked paths, pressured political participation, and secondary students often chose revolution over academics. By 1926, the “May Fourth” generation, though reconnected with politics, differed from the 1911 Revolution students. They broke from gentry habitus, had clearer consensus against old-style education, rejecting the old education. Despite the tensions, the 1920s saw a new educational field take shape.